Images blurred in the Canvas

Hello,
Been using FCP for a few years, now, but recently started using FCP 5. I just started having a problem with images I've imported into FCP. When I import an image, any size, tiny or huge, it appears crystal clear in the viewer, but slightly blurred in the canvas. I thought it was the picture size or something, but I have no idea why it's happening. I am a FCP 3 native, and never had anyproblems like this, so any info would help.
Help!
Thanks

You can't judge any image quality, colours or effects in the Canvas. You must use an external playback device, preferably a broadcast monitor. And actually, this has been the case for a long time in Final Cut Pro, not just on FCP5.


www.derekmok.com

So the bluttiness in the canvas is standard? It's just a littlefrustrating when I'm editing, I don't want to keep editing and find out that when my project is done, the blurriness in the canvas was in fact real, and now all the pics are blurry.
If I don't have access to a broadcast monitor, what would my best bet be?
Thanks for all the help.

Export a full-quality QuickTime movie with the same settings as your timeline. Use Export - QuickTime Movie, not Export - Using QuickTime Conversion. Open up the resulting QuickTime movie in QuickTime Player, and activate High Quality playback (APPLE-J, choose Video Track - Quality). Now look at the effect -- this should give you a good approximation of what it would look like on tape, though still not completely accurate given the differences between a broadcast monitor and a computer monitor.


www.derekmok.com

Modonnel,
If you edit for a living, you really must invest in a good broadcast monitor.
'Nuff said.

If you want to avoid the blurries on your Canvas, you have to make damn sure that your RT pop up menu is set to Safe RT, High Quality, Full Frame Playback.

Set the Canvas to precisely 100% (and stretch it out so there are no scroll bars). Uncheck in the Zoom pop up, "Show as Sq. Pixels" and you will have a crystal clean Canvas w/o having to do the Derek's "QT Boogie"

Down and dirty? Hook up your TV to your DV Camcorder. What? No DV Camcorder? No spare TV? Not much hope for you then pal. ;-)

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
Adobe
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro Community Blog
Follow Me on Twitter!

Are you on 10.4? I think there was a bug with some versions before this.. let me check..

Hmm. Not sure if this spplies to you, but just in case .. from the Apple website

"Some users have reported that the Canvas window will show video that is slightly blurred or softened when the video is playing back.

This can occur on configurations running Final Cut Pro HD (4.5) under Mac OS X 10.3.6 or Mac OS X 10.3.5 with NVIDIA graphics cards. This issue does not affect the final output, and should only appear in the Canvas when the video is in motion; when the playhead is still, the Canvas should display normally.

This issue is addressed in the Mac OS X 10.3.7 Update. Please update to Mac OS X 10.3.7. "

Prolly got cleaned up in FCP5, but still.. worth a look.

Ok, I hooked up my dv camera to my tv, followed all the rules on every post, and still the images are blurred in my canvas. Just pictures, not video. I have really high resolution pics, but they still turn out blurry in my canvas and on my television. Do I have to change their resolution to fit my video dimensions? Do I need some kind of update? Does this happen a lot? Please help if you can, I'm one frustrated dude.
Thanks.

Did you render?

> I have really high resolution pics

How big are the stills? Too big is just as bad as not big enough.


www.derekmok.com

Crop or resize them to be no more than twice the native frame size of your project.

Render. And sometimes you need to flush the render queue and rerender to make sure they are actually displaying properly.

As said before, you really need an external monitor (even if it's a just a TV) to do this right.

Unless you have a reason to do so (such as a motion effect), stills and pics and GFX usually work out better made to be the native sequence size - single layers will then require no render; layers of them stacked and/or text and such layered with them will peobably require a render to display proper resolution.

HarryD

how do you flush the render queue and renderer? I'll try anything. Some of the pics I have are pretty big, so what i'm picking up is that I should make them close to 720x480 in size...
Any advice is helpful, this problem is really holding me up.
Thanks-

To dump your render files choose Tools > Render manager. Follow the instructions from there. Then, make sure you re-render your project. Select your timeline and press option-r, and let it render everything.

It is a very good idea to reduce the size of your graphics. Best of all is to make them the right size to begin with, but as Kevin says, up to twice as large is generally OK.